Playoffs I won't predict this early because they depend too much on who's hot at the end of the season. At least give me 'til the trade deadline. If I had to hazard a guess, Tigers over the Giants in the WS 4-2. Giants came in 4-3 over the Cards, Tigers over the Sox 4-2.

AL MVP: Same as last year, with pressure from Trout again and Prince Fielder
NL MVP: Giancarlo Stanton
AL CY: Same as last year; boring year for the AL with Scherzer and Miggy repeating
NL CY: Cliff Lee

I wouldn't be surprised to see Jones in the top 5 in MVP voting. I'm kind of feeling a breakout season for him this year. Don't know why, but I was feeling one for Davis last year, and that happened to happen. This time last spring O's fans everywhere were still drooling over Jones and how he was an MVP-caliber bat. And I was saying, if we have an MVP-caliber bat this year, it's going to be Davis. He has the plate discipline to be great. Jones has the talent to be great, but because of his approach will only ever be very good. A breakout season for Jones is maybe what, .330-.335 with 35-40 homers? And a .350 OBP. And lazy defense. 20 years ago, that might have been a legitimate MVP candidate. Voters today are a little too smart for that.

He's getting worse, too, in terms of his approach. Consistently worse. Last year he set career highs not only in swing rate, but also in swing rate on balls outside the strike zone. According to Baseball Info Solutions, Jones swung at 59% of pitches last season. Only 42% of the pitches thrown to him were in the strike zone. His swing rate on pitches out of the zone was 44.9%. Davis, by contrast, swung at 35.7% of pitches out of the zone. Miggy swung at 34%. Mike Trout swung at an incredible 24.2% of balls thrown outside the strike zone. I don't think you need to look much further than that to see why Jones has a much harder time being a legitimate MVP candidate than the other 3 guys on that list. It's hard to get hits on balls outside the zone; it's easy to make outs on them. Jones is doing the pitchers a massive favor on an everyday basis by consistently swinging at their pitches. And it's not just one kind of pitch he's a sucker for. Breaking balls low and away. Fastballs up. Fastballs down. Anything in under the hands. He'll swing at all of it. Hard to overcome that and be elite. His monstrous talent lets him be very good. But that's his ceiling.

I meant to point that out for you. You have them in the playoffs. Not winning.

AL East was, at least for me, by far the hardest division to project. Every other division has at least one pretty bad team you can almost put in pen for at best a losing record, at worst an ugly one. And most have a team you feel is more likely than not to make the postseason, at least. In the AL East I can see any team finishing in any spot, with the lone exception being that I have a hard time seeing the Rays finishing worse than 3rd. That said, although I put them in a wildcard spot in my projected standings, I would actually give them a lower chance of making the postseason, certainly of winning the division, than Boston, NY, or Baltimore. They feel more consistent, easier to trust. But they don't have a huge, brilliant upside the way the other clubs in the division seem to.

Baltimore - if Gausman comes up at some point and pitches like he's capable of, Tillman pitches well, Ubaldo throws strikes, they could be a great team. OTOH, if Chris Davis keeps hitting like he hit for the last month and a half of the season, Machado takes a while to get comfortable again, and Ubaldo blows up, they could easily end up below .500.

NY - If Pineda stays healthy, Jeter bounces back a bit, and their other old guys (Beltran, Soriano) keep on rolling, they could be a World Series contender again. They have seemed about a year away from collapse for 2 or 3 seasons now, and it could happen this year. I honestly don't know what to expect from any of their starting pitchers, and if a couple of those old guys break down...

Last year, most people had Toronto winning the division and the Red Sox coming in last. The opposite happened, and now most people seem to have each repeating. I highly doubt that both of those things happen, if either. Both of these teams have similar personnel to last year. So who knows.

Adam Jones already has 3800+ ML plate appearances, it seems like we should know who he is by now. I'd be very surprised if he broke out like Chris Davis did last year. Davis "only" had 1700 or so PA spread out over a handful of years prior to last year.

I suppose a .280 hitter with 30 homers who never walks and strikes out a lot could be a MVP. I can't imagine how bad everyone else would have to be offensively for that to happen but I guess it could. Otherwise, there's no reason to believe he's figured something out. He hasn't had a spike in walks or drastic decrease in whiffs. And that's what has to happen for him to be something else.

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/18/2014 9:43:00 AM (view original):I suppose a .280 hitter with 30 homers who never walks and strikes out a lot could be a MVP. I can't imagine how bad everyone else would have to be offensively for that to happen but I guess it could. Otherwise, there's no reason to believe he's figured something out. He hasn't had a spike in walks or drastic decrease in whiffs. And that's what has to happen for him to be something else.